Robert Frank - Photographs New York Monday, April 9, 2018 | Phillips

Photographs

New York Auction 9 April 2018

  • Provenance

    Acquired directly from the artist

  • Literature

    Tate Modern, Robert Frank: Story Lines, p. 124
    Todoli, Robert Frank, Fotografias/Films 1948/1984, p. 141

  • Catalogue Essay

    In 1958 Robert Frank began a series of photographs he took while riding the bus through New York City. He printed many of these images with a distinctive gray margin, including the print offered here, “to heighten the feeling of seeing from the inside to the outside.”

    He wrote: “The Bus carries me thru the City, I look out the window, I look at the people on the street, the Sun and the Traffic Lights. It has to do with the desperation and endurance --- I have always felt that about living in New York. Compassion and probably some understanding for New York’s Concrete and its people, walking . . . waiting . . . standing up . . . holding hands . . . the summer of 1958” (Robert Frank: Moving Out, p. 204).

  • Artist Biography

    Robert Frank

    Swiss • 1924

    As one of the leading visionaries of mid-century American photography, Robert Frank has created an indelible body of work, rich in insight and poignant in foresight. In his famed series The Americans, Frank travelled the United States, capturing the parade of characters, hierarchies and imbalances that conveyed his view of the great American social landscape.

    Frank broke the mold of what was considered successful documentary photography with his "snapshot aesthetic." It is Frank's portrayal of the United States through grit and grain that once brought his work to the apex of criticism, but has now come to define the art of documentary photography.

    View More Works

6

Robert Frank

From the Bus

1958
Gelatin silver print, printed 1980s.
12 3/4 x 8 1/2 in. (32.4 x 21.6 cm)
Signed, titled 'NYC' and dated 'ca. 1955' in ink in the margin.

Estimate
$15,000 - 25,000 

Sold for $35,000

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Photographs

New York Auction 9 April 2018